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December 14, 2010 · 11:34 pm

Cabbage Soup Diet

Did you workout today? Good for you! That’s awesome, especially in these dark days filled with holiday anticipation (and maybe stress!)!

It took me a loooonnngg time to get geared up for my 5 mile run today. It was cold out there! Until today I had never run outside in under 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Today it was 26*. Thus the “gearing up” was both mental and physical. It was a double glove kinda day…

And as I ran I sang like nobody was listening (no, really, I did)! Oh wait, nobody was listening because it was just me and the mailman on the streets. Today was perhaps the first day in three months of running in Charlottesville where I didn’t see another single runner. I must say, it made me a little proud. I’ve never been exactly “hardcore”, more of a fair weather sports girl if you will. I was a whitewater raft guide for a few years after high school but I definitely preferred to work on sunny days with perfect water levels:).

I know I’ve said this already, but it’s coming as a surprise to myself so I keep repeating it; I don’t mind running in the cold. Even 26 degrees was manageable since the sun was shining. I don’t, however, like running in the wind. At times the wind literally choked me. Yuck.

After a slow first 30 minutes I finished off with 17 minutes of sprints. My pattern was 90 seconds run, 30 seconds sprint, 30 seconds walk. Lately my fitness philosophy has been “work out harder, not longer” and sprints fit in with this perfectly.

Sprinting bursts burn a ton of calories, increase your overall speed, speed up your metabolism, increase production of human growth hormone, and make you feel tough and strong. Sometimes I jog instead of walk for recovery after a sprint but walking is really better. When I recover at a jog pace I don’t reach that true anaerobic full-out sprint. If you are doing a real “sprint” you should want to walk afterward (or stop all together, although I wouldn’t recommend it).

“The difference between try and triumph is just a little umph!” – Marvin Phillips

The sprints definitely added some “umph” to my run!

Lunch was quick and simple. I picked this big boy up at the farmers market on Saturday and have been eating off it since then!

It must have weighed 5 pounds! (I was tempted to take it upstairs to my bathroom scale but I resisted…)

So I made sauerkraut. And soup. Lots of Cabbage and Butternut Soup.

This soup is super simple, shredded cabbage, diced butternut squash, onions, salt, and cayenne pepper and full of vitamins and minerals. Both cabbage and butternut are high in calcium, manganese, magnesium, potassium, B6, and C.

We have a fun and random outing tonight. Yesterday Tate got a call about one of the offices we have for listed on Craigslist for rent. He mentioned the name of the caller to me and I said, “oh, I know her, we were childhood friends!” Small world, small town! So we are going to meet her for a drink tonight, catch up and see if maybe she wants to rent from us.

Can’t wait to read about how your workouts went!

P.S Oh yeah! And I did about 10 minutes of power Pilates, my favorite 7 exercises without rest between exercises.

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Filed under cooking, food, goals, recipes, running, workouts

Tagged as Charlottesville, exercise, goals, running, sauerkraut, squash

December 14, 2010 · 12:17 am

Delicious Delivery

Comment Commit Day 1

Thanks, Bekah, for participating! How was your class?

I committed to a strength training workout, yoga, and a walk and enjoyed completing all three.

My 35 minute full body strength session was with Steve Maresca on Exercise TV. This workout was really fun, fast paced, challenging, and creative. I don’t have a medicine ball 😦 so I used 5 pound hand weights throughout. The best part was that I feel like this workout is super efficient, my heart rate was elevated and I was working the major muscles of my upper and lower body nearly the entire time.

Yoga was positively delicious this afternoon. I threw my mat down on the living room floor, I turned on some Ganesha Sharanam and I rolled with it, or flowed with it ;). 30 minutes later I felt like I had indulged in something healing yet luxurious.

As for the walk, when Tate got home from work we walked just shy of a mile to the library for him to do some faxing. We hightailed it home for a quick turn around. I needed to grab a change of cloths to go to dance class.

Yep, I am a dancer. In fact “dancer” used to be one of my primary identities. I taught dance, went through 4 years of one of the most respected university dance programs in the country, performed professionally, and had my own company. Then we moved to Peru. I tend to give Peru more credit than it probably deserves in this aspect of my life, I suppose it was a combination of factors that led to a two year break.

But now I am ready to get moving again! There are modern dance classes offered most nights of the week here in C’ville but thus far I have only made it to one. And it was flipping fantastic. You can read about it here.

I tried to go to class on Saturday morning but it was canceled due to a big open house event at the arts center. Which brings me back to tonight. I grabbed my dance clothes and braved the 25 degree (before windchill, of which there was plenty!) evening and walked back downtown for class. Unfortunately class was cancelled, “no heat in studio”. I guess mid-December was not the best timing for my return to the dance world.

This afternoon there was an unexpected knock at my door. Why, it’s the UPS man! With a package for Tate and I! I couldn’t imagine what it could be or who it was from! There was no way I was waiting for Tate to get home from work to satisfy my curiousity (sorry love!).

Lookie, lookie!